(1) Superficial Love.(Revised Version). (2) Holy Matrimony.

                    1

         Superficial Love. 


You told me I was too parochial,
And too ugly to board with you,
So I cut off my nose to add interest
                                  to my face.

When gauze and lint were removed
You laughed at the predictable outcome,
And declared that a slight improvement
Just would not do,
And that a drastic improvisation
Was needed to shore up the ruin.
                   
We consulted the history books,
Concentrating on old Byzantium
Where party games were the politics
                                    of the day,
And finicky royal eunuchs
Ran pointless, elliptical races
All around the imperial clepsydra
To outpace any new fangled schemes.

We decided that a silver mask
Might add a touch of sparkle and glamour
To the inconvenient absence
So prominent between my eyes.

But love making proved out of the question,
After midnight the mask would start slipping
To reveal up close on the duvet
That fairy tales are a pack of old lies.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 30th. - July 1st. - 2nd. - 7th. 2016.

Note. A clepsydra is a water clock.
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                        2.

         Holy Matrimony. (An improvised love poem).).


Girl - I did believe that I chose you
But -
          No No No No -
                                    God chose you
To break me apart - and then to make
                                            me whole.


When I stand alone in front of a mirror
I see a husk -
                      A shredded leaf in winter
Stranded upon the snow.


But when you stand - so proud - beside
                                                          me
I am an oak - broad and strong - at mid
                                                  summer -
Safe from the saw and the axe.


And when you kiss my face in the morning
My heart zings like a gilded aviary
                  adazzle with ten thousand birds.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - June 30th. - July 1st. 2016.

Two Poems. (1) June 25th. 2016. From the Roof of Tate Modern. (2) Dead Thorn.

                 1.

June 25th. 2016. From the Roof of Tate Modern.


A black spot on a sheet of paper.
An ink blot relentlessly spreading
Like mould on a kitchen curtain.
A tumult of sharks darkening the water
Until the whole surface is scuffed
And clarity becomes impossible.
A distant smudge of cloud spreading east
Until all blue is lost,
And just one splash of red disrupts the greyness,
A patch of blood seeping through a bandage.

We watch the wild storm gathering over London,
And when the thunder cracks above our heads
There is talk of a ghostly Blitz high in the Heavens,
And the Mead Halls of Valhalla imploding like dead stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 27th. 2016.

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                  2.

         Dead Thorn.


That woman with a thorn lodged in her heart
Sat waiting for her husband to return,
Sat grieving quietly by the telephone.
"Only he can cure my pain", she softly whispered.
"Only he can dig this ancient thorn right out".

In due course she telephoned the local doctor,
A man who knew her case from A to Zee.
"But your husband died last December, don`t you remember?
I concluded that he died of no known cause.
But you seemed to think you killed him with a kiss".

"Oh no I did not", the grieving woman whispered.
"He died because we had lost the will to love".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 22nd, - 23rd. 2016.
July 24th. 2020.

Ordinary Love. A Poem for Jo Cox. 1974 - 2016.

It was such an ordinary love,
A young mother`s love for her children,
For her husband,
For her colleagues and her friends,
For her tiny patch of England.

But this ordinary love had made her wise,
Had helped her understand that other folk
Knew joy and pain as she did,
And shared with her a raw humanity.

This wisdom made her travel far and wide
Into the bombed out cities, war wracked lands
Far from the quiet back streets of her childhood,
The safe town she was born in.

She travelled with love burning in her heart,
Burning with the pain that others felt
When they lost their homes, their children, husbands, wives,
To jihad and systemic civil war.

She helped raped women find a home, a refuge:
Syrians find a kinder, gentler land.
Their Human Rights she shouted to the wide world,
Shouted loud,
Her Yorkshire burr eloquent with compassion.

But some folk are deaf and blind and dumb to love,
They think of little, only their good selves:
"Me First" they shriek, at neighbours and the media:
"Me First, and then to Hell with all the rest".

This good woman, she went out to help her neighbours,
The dispossessed, the victims of injustice;
The refugees left helpless at closed borders;
The poor folk knocking on her surgery door.

But one sad man, who hated all she stood for,
Now waited for her with a knife and gun
To cut her down, on a street where she felt safe,
In the quiet Yorkshire town that was her home.

One sad lonely man, blind to the tears of children
Crying for their mother in the night.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,
June 22nd. - 23rd. 2016. 

This afternoon I joined the thousands in Trafalgar Square gathered to grieve and celebrate Jo Cox. I was moved to tears by the children singing "If I had a hammer", and the intense sad fellowship of the crowd. But I came away more hopeful than I had been when I set out; more hopeful that there are more good people in the world than I had feared. When I returned home I revised this hurriedly written poem, but I have kept the downbeat ending because the sadness has not yet left me. This afternoon I made this pledge with the tousands in the crowd, To Love Like Jo, and I ask all who read this little poem, do please do the same.

Owl and Hawk. A Quartet of Poems about Myth and Nature. (Revised)

I first sketched this quartet of poems during the 1970`s.Originally there were several more poems but I discarded certain deeply negative segments and collated two separate sections to create a single work. The time in which these poems were first sketched was a period of conflict and divisive politics. The Vietnam War had only recently fizzled out and the war in Ireland was growing more and more ferocious day by day. These poems reflect that time of uncertainties, uncertainties that I find are now reflected, as in a smokey mirror, by the raw divisive politics rocking both Britain and the United States of America this tragic month of June. These poems are very raw, and much of the writing is in a style that I now no longer wish to emulate, but I do think that they still posses a fierce validity of their own, so I took them out of my bottom drawer, added a line or two here, changed a word or two there, and have set them out in the order in which I think they should be read.          

        Owl and Hawk.

            First Poem.
The Mad Hermit and the Owl.


"The wind of the wing of madness
Last night passed over me".

                   1.

The Owl shadows the dark wood.
The Owl is the essence of night.
A silent hunter haunting the northern wilderness.
A desolate shadow descending through the pines.

                   2.

I cannot sleep when his fierce cries pierce the moonlit forest.
I cannot sleep when his shadow falls across my window.

I cannot walk free, out of the moonlit forest.
I cannot escape the malignity of that shadow.

My darkened window reflects a sudden movement.
I panic and shake when he passes.

His wing beats echoing through the winter stillness
Awake dark fears in the depths of my mind.

                    3.

In folk law the Owl is a bird of evil omen,
A lord of the underworld come to gather souls,
A portent of evil.
When I hear his shrill cries piercing the snow hushed forest
Those ancient legends flower like wounds in my brain.

                      *

            Second Poem.
           Owl in Winter.


Short days.
The cold nights encourage the work of the Owl,
A feral holocaust on the altars of Nature
Accomplished with impartial efficiency
Between the nightly birth and death of the moon.

Cloaked in his straightjacket of wings
The owl sits still and waits.
A precision crafted machine
Primed to perfection,
His keen eyes cutting the dark like razors
Scan the forest for prey.

The wind threads like a ghost between bare trees
Shaking the undergrowth with tiny waves
That expose the darting movements of a vole.
That instant life and death have just one face.

A cry stark as the winter forests
Acts as prologue to the deed of terror.
Quick talons grip and dig.

Wisely the Owl hones silence like a blade,
His iron secret,
A silence that hangs like Arctic water
Knifing toward the snow.
This is the owl in his moon cold fury,
The barb and craft of a dark vocation
His infinite skill.
Only the sunlight can mellow his actions
Moulding his wings around sleep.

                     *

            Third Poem.
               The Kill.


Deep in the moonlit valley
All life is hushed:
Nothing stirs, nothing wakens,
Nothing shakes the tufted grasses,
Only the quiet breathing of the wind.

Like a scalpel a rodent`s cry
Rips open the womb of night.-
Wing beats thrusting upward
Crush the wild sound.

Scratched on the midnight air a living shadow
The young hawk soars
Riding the breath of the wind.-
For a moment the wood is alive
With a hundred thousand voices
Shrieking alarm.

The shadow cuts across
The surgical light of the moon
Then drops far out of sight.
For a moment the danger is passed.

The panic quickly subsides,
Dies into a subdued whisper,

A whisper softer than the tread of a fox.

                    *

           Fourth Poem.
       Summer Solstice.


                    1.

Beauty stuns my eyes.
I stare at the scorched horizon.

                    2.

Retreating out of the dawn world
The old Owl soars,
Rising like the Phoenix
Ascending into her pyre.

Feathers the colour of embers
Blackened by the desolate rain;
His eyes, earth swallowed fires,
Scorn the light of redemption.

In the anguish of a resurrection,
Sought but not understood,
He darts into the sunlight
That dazzles, torments, then stuns him.

The ferocity of the bright sun
Shuts down his laser vision:
Retreating into his dark cave
He embraces the ashes of sleep.

                    3.

The pale morning light enthrals me.
Midsummer bonfires challenge the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Quartet commenced December 18th. 1972.
Completed in this format, June 19th. - 20th - 21st. 2016.

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Dream Laden Spring. (Completed).

The morning after we celebrated your birthday
the wind turned mild;
pale daffodils rocked like dreaming children
beside the quiet river;
skeletal trees ducked and weaved under white clouds
that drifted silent as swans.
Winter had shuffled off to an early sleep over
on the peaks of far away mountains.

And then, as was usual at this time of year,
intoxicating rumours awoke and quickly flourished
among old travellers crouched around the camp fire,
A cornucopia of wizened Fortune Tellers
who whispered madly into pots and pans.-

The phoenix was seen alive upon a Monday,
she zig zagged on fire through a galaxy of branches.
A unicorn, tamed by a young girl`s whisper,
pranced for an hour in the April snow.
A dog faced boy lay dead in a cot.
A wolf brought shame on a red cloaked virgin,
then gobbled all her cookies up on the spot.
A milch cow cited Homer to the vicar.
A horse gave birth to a brindled cat.

A chicken laid an egg packed with diamonds. 
A cockerel baked the farmer in his coarse linen smock.-
Tall tales clutched to old hearts like rare silver
now that the cold times were almost gone.

But we two, we could not dream, not you and I,
We had known too much sorrow since late December
when the surgeon failed to save our unborn child,
and nearly killed you when he cut too deep.

We remained locked inside your grandad`s Vardo,
curled snug in a ball like new born kittens,
mute in our sorrow, afraid of our grief, but not wanting to die,

stone deaf and blind to the change in the weather.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
First sketched March 10th. 2011. 
Revised September 5th. - 6th. - 9th. - October 21st. 2013.
Completely rewritten June 15th. - August 27th. 2016.

October 17th. 2020.

The many European influences on this poem are very clear, especially the Brothers Grimm; and the Welsh Gypsies referred to in this poem, originated in Rajasthan 1000 years ago. Britain owes a huge amount of it`s culture to the rest of the world. This has never been an island isolated from the Eurasian continent, but has always been a part of the Eurasian mainstream. We are a very European people.

(1) Jazz, a Fantasy in Theatreland. (2) Two Pensees.

                     1.

Jazz, a Fantasy in Theatreland. 


The melancholy rat a tat of jazz
Makes me feel peculiarly lazy,
Subterraneum counter culture icky,
Down town street kid crazy,
Back room clubhouse hazy,
Black coffee with my sweetheart in the sleepless half light of a footloose
                                                                                         Soho dawn sicky,
& dead dead dead to the tick a tick a tick a of the mean time monitoring
                                                                                                          clock
In the universal office schlock / prison block
Of the everyday work a day world.


& jazz jazz jazz
is like a grey damp cloth swabbed over my sleep creased work wearied
                                                                                                      eyelids
To keep me awake
But not fully compos mentis
In a strange half light of unfocused slick stick silhouettes
Dancing dancing dancing
Without rhyme or repeatable rhythm
On a flat white tattered screen.


Thus I sit in this Bankside coffee house
As patient as a monk at Compline
But waiting for God knows what.
Perhaps that sylvan winged woman at the cashpoint opposite
Will slash open the white tattered curtain
With a smile of iridescent love,
A love as yet unhinted, unspoken;
Then, with the speed of a pedigree dove, fly in through the cafe window
To airlift me to her stage right paradise.
Or shall I simply get up from the bland coffee table
And lurch blear eyed into the sunshine
Before that guy playing chess in the corner
Throws his killer queen at the radio
To cut the music dead?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 7th. - 8th. - 9th. 2016.

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                     2.

         Two Pensees.

        
        Porcelain Cup.


This porcelain cup
Is more than a thousand years old
Yet entirely new to me,
Newer than your soft white palm
That now so gently holds it.


                   *

      The White Coat.


My little white coat
That I threw across your bare shoulders
Has become a neat cocoon,
Lightweight, detached and portable,
Your little house of threads.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 2016.

Remembering that Einstein had Problems with Time. (Revised)

I love the sound of my little clock
Ticking quietly in the corner,
An electronic heartbeat driving the world
To a strict metallic rhythm.
But I do not believe the news it bleeps precisely
On every passing hour, half hour and quarter,
Because the world is not a man made thing,
A compound mechanism or a smart computer,
And cannot be perfectly kept in order
Like a game of chess or the factory floor,
Or a smooth running Daimler guzzling oil.

Time is an indeterminate strange thing,
Different for every culture; each man, each woman;
And every creature that sleeps upon the Earth.
The butterfly thinks it has lived forever,
As does the bumble bee, gazelle or camel,
The half blind infant born this very night.
And aging folk ignore the final bell
While they sit in groups around the bar room table
To tell the stories that they always tell
Because their childhoods` glow in fiercer light.
I personally prefer the instincts of the Roma,
Awake at dawn, then swift to bed under the flight of Sirius
In bowtop wagons where timeless dreams are born,
And the future seems rock solid, not mysterious.

The rule of the clock is a mere sad waste of ticking,
Except sometimes for the comfort it may bring
To the long fraught hours of sporadic, fitful sleeping,
When the pummeled eye of dawn is far too raw to open,
And the larks too cold to sing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 9th. - June 3rd. - 4th. 2016.

The title of this poem recalls Einstein`s belief in a steady state universe against all the evidence of his on exemplary calculations.